Brand Positioning Strategies – What It Is, and Why You Need It

Every successful brand undergoes a carefully designed brand positioning process. Grofox brings a simple guide for you to better understand how your brand can improve with a brand positioning strategy.

What is brand positioning?

Brand positioning is the process of defining how a brand will be placed within a market segment. This placement defines many aspects of the brand such as the target audience, and the extra value it provides the consumer that the competitors do not.

Importance of Brand Positioning

Coming up with the idea of a brand is only the first step of taking it out to the market. Creating a brand positioning strategy is just as important for the brand to succeed in the long run. Some of the benefits of brand positioning strategies include:

1. Improved Decision Making

A brand positioning strategy defines what your brand is. Hence, this helps plan out the trajectory of the brand for the next few years. With a planned out trajectory, you can take better and more informed decisions within various departments.

2. A Specific Marketing Strategy

Another advantage of brand positioning is that you define your target audience. Upon studying your target audience, you can observe the online and offline platforms they are present on, among other demographics. This helps shape a well-defined and specific marketing strategy.

3. Differentiate Your Brand From Your Competitors

For a brand to be successful, it needs to give the target audience a valuable aspect that no other brand in the market is providing. Also, it needs to be kept in mind that this valuable aspect is difficult for your competitors to duplicate within their own brand. A brand positioning strategy helps your company pan out these details.

4. Increased Consistency

In the long run, it is difficult to maintain consistency within a company. This may be due to improper coordination between departments within the brand or due to a change in employees. Keeping in mind these problems, a brand positioning strategy helps shape the trajectory along which your brand grows with time. Hence, this helps maintain a consistency over time.

5. Focused Brand Awareness Strategies

One of the many advantages of brand positioning strategies is that it allows a company to efficiently design a focused brand awareness strategy. This is because a brand positioning strategy helps define the target audience along with how the brand is different from its competitors. Hence, increasing brand awareness effectively becomes easier.

6. Increased Focus

A brand positioning strategy provides a short term and long term vision for the brand. This helps in efficiently coordinating between various departments within the company. Also, this vision helps plan out and reduce the abruptness caused by a change in employees.

Errors in Brand Positioning

At times, while creating a brand positioning strategy, mistakes are made in the process. Due to these mistakes, the impression left in the minds of the consumers could have a negative impact on the brand image.

There are four types of errors during the execution of the brand positioning strategy – confused positioning, under positioning, over positioning, and double positioning.

1. Confused Positioning

Confused positioning is a type of error where the consumer is confused about how he or she feels about your brand. This is due to at least one of two reasons. The first reason is that the company changes the brand positioning strategy too often, leaving the consumer confused. The second reason is that the benefits regarding the brand that are advertised contradict each other, hence confusing the consumer.

2. Under Positioning

Under positioning is a type of error where the consumer is unclear about what the brand is in the first place. Hence, they are unable to visualise what value the brand or product will add once it is purchased. Due to this unclear understanding, the consumer chooses your competitor’s brand over yours.

3. Over Positioning

Over positioning is a type of error where only a small niche of the desired target audience can relate with the brand. This is because the brand positioning strategy that has been created is too detailed or specific. Hence, while positioning the brand within the market, only a small group of consumers can relate with the brand.

4. Double Positioning

During the promotion of a brand or product, advertisements showcase the value a consumer will receive if they make their brand the go – to brand. But, at times, consumers do not accept the claims made in these advertisements. This error in brand positioning is called double positioning.

As you can see, having a brand positioning strategy can be very helpful for your brand. But, if not done correctly, it can have a negative effect on your brand image. Grofox is a digital marketing agency which offers customised and effective brand positioning services. Increase your online presence with our brand positioning strategies.